Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it. – Mikhail Bakunin
Though most modern people consider the duality of good and evil to be a universal concept, nothing could be farther from the truth. Since time immemorial there have been concepts of right and wrong, but the idea that there exists a morality untied to the pronouncements of leaders or deities is a comparatively new one (and indeed, one that still appears to lie beyond the understanding of most humans). In ancient times (and for a majority of modern people) “right” or “good” behavior is that which obeys the dicta of some authority figure, however arbitrary or contradictory; for example, in the Old Testament Yahweh often orders the Hebrews to break his own commandments, yet that obedience is viewed as virtuous (consider also the story of Abraham, who would’ve obediently sacrificed his son had Yahweh not countermanded the order at the last second). But during the 2nd millennium BCE, some philosophers began to recognize that there are universal principles of morality which do not depend on laws, and that moral decision is a matter of higher judgment rather than mere mechanistic obedience.
But when personal ethics conflict with laws enforced by violence, something has to give; what is a moral person to do when the right action is prohibited by law or immoral behavior demanded by it? Even if a person is so dedicated to Good that he is willing to accept state-inflicted violence as the price of being a moral person in a deeply-flawed world, state-sponsored malefactors will inevitably prevent or undo his good actions as soon as they are discovered, possibly at great cost to those he cares about. Consider the classic villain trick of compelling the hero to evil actions via threat of grievous harm to someone he cares deeply about; the state uses this monstrous form of compulsion every day by threatening to abduct the children of those it wishes to intimidate and subjecting them to life-destroying abuse and neglect. Such forms of compulsion are by their very nature evil because they remove the capacity for free moral choice, thereby making good impossible. A computer, a lower animal which functions purely by instinct, or an inanimate object under the influence of natural laws is capable of neither good nor evil; morality requires free choice, and a sentient being robbed of that choice is reduced to the level of a mechanism or a vegetable. The act of compelling action therefore exists in the same moral realm as imprisonment, lobotomization or mutilation; it forcibly removes an intrinsic capacity of the sentient being without its consent.
In Gnostic theology, God created the universe in order to make a space where the angels could be away from Him so that they could have free will; the Divine Presence is so overwhelming that no creature can choose to do anything but obey when confronted by it. And even though that action resulted in the creation of evil, it also brought goodness into existence because without choice there can be neither. An example of the inverse appears in the novel and film A Clockwork Orange: when the Ludovico Technique conditions the sadistic young criminal Alex against sex and violence, he becomes unable to defend himself from murderous attacks or sexually contact a consenting woman. He “ceases…to be a creature capable of moral choice”; he is neither good or evil, but merely a sort of organic robot (hence the title). All the government cares about is that he refrain from prohibited types of evil; the fact that he can’t actually be good is immaterial (thus proving that politicians are far less wise than 1st-century philosophers).
Modern tyrannies pretend that paternalistic laws coupled with harsh punishments make people “good”, but this is nothing but a low-level, society-wide application of the Ludovico Technique and those oppressed by it are robbed of moral choice. As Sheldon Richman wrote in a recent Reason article, “social engineers think they need to deprive us of freedom in order to make us moral or in some way better…so they use the law to keep us from discriminating, gambling, eating allegedly fattening foods, taking drugs, smoking in restaurants, abstaining from helping others, leaving our seat belts unbuckled, you name it.” The article discusses “On Doing the Right Thing”, a 1924 essay by anarchist philosopher Albert Nock, who was nevertheless thoroughly Victorian in his ideas about sex; he clearly held extramarital activity (including sex work) in the same low esteem he afforded to habitual drunkenness. But despite his personal aversion to “loose living”, he specifically rejects the notion that morality can or should be compelled by law:
…I remember seeing recently a calculation that the poor American is staggering along under a burden of some two million laws; and obviously, where there are so many laws, it is hardly possible to conceive of any items of conduct escaping contact with one or more of them. Thus, the region where conduct is controlled by law so far encroaches upon the region of free choice and the region where conduct is controlled by a sense of the Right Thing, that there is precious little left of either…living in America is like serving in the army; ninety per cent of conduct is prescribed by law and the remaining ten per cent by the esprit du corps, with the consequence that opportunity for free choice in conduct is practically abolished…a civilisation organised upon this absence of responsibility is pulpy and unsound.
…freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fibre can be developed…we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of…in suggesting that we try freedom, therefore, the anarchist and individualist has a strictly practical aim…the production of a race of responsible beings…our legalists and authoritarians…keep insisting…[that] freedom [allows one] to drink oneself to death. The anarchist grants this at once; but at the same time he points out that it also means freedom to say…”I never drink.” It unquestionably means freedom to go on without any code of morals at all; but it also means freedom to rationalise, construct and adhere to a code of one’s own. The anarchist presses the point invariably overlooked, that freedom to do the one without correlative freedom to do the other is impossible; and that just here comes in the moral education which legalism and authoritarianism, with their denial of freedom, can never furnish…
Even if it were true that an authoritarian nanny-state was a “safer” society (an assertion with which anyone to whom a cop or prosecutor takes a dislike would disagree), that still would not make it a better society. Moral progress does not begin with authorities bringing stone tablets down from mountains, but with individuals who are free to act openly on their personal principles, thus providing a good example to others. The more freedom a society allows, the more new ethical concepts enter the marketplace of ideas; the less freedom, the fewer. People learn by doing, not by being done for; unexercised muscles do not grow, but rather atrophy. And it is impossible to develop a moral sense without the opportunity to make free moral judgments whose consequences are those which result from the decision itself instead of those arbitrarily inflicted by the state.
One Year Ago Tomorrow
“June Miscellanea (Part One)” reports on the beginning of the Canadian prostitution law appeal, CNN’s bizarre definition of “expert”, more nanny-state cheerleading from Kristof and Mother Russia’s attempt to prove she can be just as pigheaded as Uncle Sam.
Are we even sure what “better” is? Oh, we’re told we will have a better quality of life if we’re sober, well behaved, don’t over eat, take drugs. But would a long sober restrained life necessarily be better than a vivid, short, drugged and drunken one? I’d say that’s up to individual taste.
I doubt the entire concept of morality.
I’d argue that the basis of real morality is about being decent to each other.
What people make the mistake with in our society is that we are more concerned with personal aesthetics then morality. In other words, how something looks is more important than reality.
It’s the basis of so much law, really. It’s why we treat things that we call public health problems punitively. If we cared about the health of drug addicts, we’d provide maintenance doses (or at least the legal opportunity to obtain this type of treatment at their own expense) rather than prison and cold turkey as the only options. We don’t, of course, because then they wouldn’t be “punished” for their “sins.” The only reason why liquor was re-legalized in this country was because practically every citizen was breaking that law. But while liquor was illegal, the prohibitionists were happy when formaldehyde and other poisons were added to the brew:
“In a dark but little-known chapter of U.S. history, the federal government ordered the poisoning of alcohol supplies to deter and punish those who sought to flout Prohibition-era bans.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/029029_Prohibition_poisoning.html#ixzz1xmZY7XkW”
There’s state sponsored morality, for you!
It’s the same with sex laws, of course, all about the optics of people who prefer “sins” of personal pleasure to be done furtively and secretly rather than openly.
Saying morality is about being ‘decent’ is a given, because you define what is ‘decent’ with morality.
Part of the problem I see is the confusion between ‘law’ and ‘moral’. A law is designed to restrict actions, a moral is designed to restrict motive or thoughts. To put it another way, an oppressive law restricts your body, and an oppressive moral restricts your mind.
Also, being concerned with appearance is a type of morality, its stage three of Kohlberg’s theory.
The only consistent definition of morality is “that behavior which pleases [some particular person]’s taste.” Which doesn’t mean that it’s pointless to have that sort of taste or to attempt to satisfy it, but does mean that you need to choose your moral code with your eyes open and not simply accept one uncritically merely because you’ve been told that “God” or “the public” authored it.
The libertarian moral code, which I follow, begins with the premise that human beings are the only “people” (our reason makes us superior to other animals by our very nature, without any need to attribute that fact to a God) and that each person is sovereign (entitled to govern him/herself). Thus there are no virtues per se: all behavior is either “wrong” or “not wrong,” and “wrong” is limited to those actions which violate another person’s rights.
Does this mean I am an anarchist? No. Government, properly limited, can be the most efficient way (lowest cost and least actual violence) to enforce the rights we legitimately have. But it needs to be limited to just that, and in principle there is nothing a politician, judge, or police officer can do on your behalf that you could not equally rightly do for yourself.
Thus government is simply a tool, an instrument of violence, exactly like a gun; and like a gun, each act of using it should be judged right or wrong as a function of who did it, to whom, why, and what provocation preceded it. The tool itself is not right or wrong, per se; it is simply a tool.
This post on an economics blog expands on the non-relationship between morals and the law.
Morality is not for the benefit of the individual, it is for the long term stability and prosperity of a culture. It’s just another example of natural selection at work on a much larger scale than a single human lifetime.
Actually, I think its more about mind control. If you can train a society to feel guilty doing something, they won’t even try to do it AND they will make laws to stop other people from doing it.
If the moral system is well designed, the society has long term stability and prosperity, much like what Confucianism did for the Han Dynasty in China.
Just to be clear, I in no way think Confucianism is a good moral system because of its predisposition to stagnation and serfdom/slavery. I support the concept of a moral system that promotes individuality, mutual respect, cooperation, and manifest destiny.
I think there is some truth in that.
What’s the relationship between “morality” and “ethics” – are they the same? LOL – I used to teach “ethics” in the Navy and I always told my students that “ethics” was about doing the right thing when no one else was watching.
Another thing I used to tell them was that history was littered with the corpses of people who “did the right thing” – and I came right and told them that anyone who told them they would always “be okay” for doing the right thing were complete bullshitters. But this is how “Bravehearts” are born – and what the hell did they want to be? Some sheep who just went along with the crowd – or someone who was brave enough to stand out for doing the right thing and then be drawn and quartered for it? I’d rather be the latter.
See, all of this stuff – on the global scale – confuses the hell out of me. All this Kohlberg (never heard of him) – the stages – never heard of them and I read the Wikipedia page and still don’t fully understand them. I think I need college credit and big bottle of motrin sometimes for reading this blog.
I know I had a lot of success with “mind control” and instilling core values into Chief Petty Officers. Yeah sure – some screwed up. But the vast majority of them did the right thing and actually wore it on their chest 24/7.
Now – you can call it “mind control” and it certainly was. We beat into them certain ideals of conducts and we told them the penalty for failing to live up to those ideal was excommunication from the elite community we considered ourselves to be.
By the way – we didn’t make the “morals” of the group so difficult that they excluded a visit to a sex worker or things like that. But lying, covering up things, refusal to take responsibility for failure, using one’s position of power for personal benefit or to torture someone else – these were things we taught.
I don’t think they were bad.
The problem with that is that “a culture” (or “society”) is not a thinking being. In reality, there is no such thing except as an abstraction which some people want to uphold, usually for reasons they haven’t examined adequately.
Hi Maggie,
“Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it. – Mikhail Bakunin”
So true. When I was a lad my dad taught me “take care of those less able to take care of themselves”.
Yet today on a facebook I see.
“Ian Arthur Even with the assumption that every word of what you are saying is true, it is of no consequence because I simply do not care. It does not affect me that much.”
This was on the Happier Abroad facebook group.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/86597977757/
Just think about what that means. This man is PROUD to say that unless something affects him he does not care. I could never make a public statement like that. Such a public statement I would take to mean as the man is the lowest of the low. But this attitude is endemic in the west now.
Bill Greathouse and I are doing radio shows for young lads in the US. One of the points we are making to the lads is that the “cremation of care” is not just a masonic ritual. There has been a “cremation of care” in the west where men and women alike do not care about their fellow people unless it affects them or they are PAID to care.
Western people live in a dystopic society (like clockwork orange) where caring for your fellow man, woman or child is seen as stupid while being selfish and greedy and condoning crimes is seen as sensible and justifiable. Sex workers are just one more group most do not care about.
Very, very sick.
Hey Nolan. Did your former children ever respond to your festering demand that they publish an acknowledgement that you were criminally victimised because their mother, very wisely, dumped your sick (and huge) arse? Are you going to put your own children on trial in your new pretend courts, as promised by you on your website?
Hi Maggie,
I deal with a lot of this topic in my second book “The Truth Be Told”. Those people who are “moral” in that they will always seek to ensure they live a life that is a positive influence on all and govern themselves are called “sovereigns”. I am a sovereign and I know it.
If a person does not know they are a sovereign then they can not be a sovereign. The book has had more than 1,000 downloads now and I am really pleased about that. It will save the lives of many young men who are so lied to about our women nowadays.
The concept of sovereignty is to live by the creators self evidence laws, the most simple and self evidence of which is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. That is about all a sovereign needs to know about the “law”.
Things that man writes down and call laws are legislation. As you have pointed out many times legislation requires “law enforcement” and that is abuse by violence and threat of incarceration.
Threat of incarceration and threat of “fining” can never be “law” because these are NOT “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. How many politicians would like to be fined or incarcerated? How many lawyers, judges, police? If THEY do not wish to be threatened or incarcerated then no law can establish any right or them to do so in return.
It is a shame that people refuse to educate themselves on the simplest of truths. That no man can make law, no group of men can make law, the creator provided us with all the laws we need. Natural Law, the greatest and most powerful of which is simply “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
Still…not even the smartest of smart people can get this very simple concept. They are too in love with the “complexity” of “legislation is law” to realise it is a scam.
http://www.mensbusinessassociation.com/Forums/tabid/752/forumid/85/threadid/850/scope/posts/Default.aspx
You wouldn’t know smart if it jumped up and bit you on the bum. You’re an evil, demented, dysfunctional individual with the intelligence of a tree stump. There is no “creator”. Religion was invented by men to control numptys like you. You are the last person in the world who does unto others as you would have them do unto you. You insult, berate and demean everybody who doesn’t agree with your sick and twisted views. You praise the murderers of women. You publish rubbish about people you don’t even know and then you wonder why you are regarded as a social pariah – THE VILLAGE IDIOT – by men, women and children. You are a waste of space. Absorb that truth, Nolan.
Morality is so vaguely defined in our society, as are the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that it is almost impossible to sort out what the difference between the two in an absolute sense.
When asked, most people will give vague answers that essentially summarize to good is the opposite of bad, and most things have a little bit of both.
Which is garbage, and much better conceptualized in yin and yang.
I think that Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory on moral development is definitely the most succinct on the subject. I think it leads to some interesting conclusions about the nature of morality and its fundamentally arbitrary nature.
I hesitate to say that ‘there is no morality without free choice’ because morality is not about right and wrong in an absolute sense, but a functional one. “Good” children do what adults tell them too, and “Bad” children don’t, but both sort are capable of all sorts of ‘moral rights and wrongs’. For example, without parental supervision, either sort of child may be capable of wanting to save a baby bird or of tormenting an ant with a magnifying glass, because neither child has fully internalized its societies ‘rules’ on what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’.
And anyway, there is always the freedom to choose and there are always consequences to that choice. The progression of Kohlberg’s theory shows the process by which these lessons about action and consequence develop in the human mind.
I don’t think that it is necessary to say that no freedom = no morality. Freedom is only a requirement for moral choice if the goal of a morality is to develop or support freedom in its society. Freedom is actually bad if the goal of a moral code is to create or maintain obedience in society, and rigid control of free choice is the only way to ‘train’ people into absolute obedience. Don’t do X is meaningless to people unless you supply a ‘because Y’ after it, and X still a ‘moral code’ whether Y is ‘its bad for you’
or ‘I will kill you if you do’.
Moral codes applied from outside are stage-four artifacts; a person who lives by such cannot progress to stage five or six. So it’s not possible to have a truly MORAL code (i.e. one which promotes individual moral development) which stipulates obedience as a virtue in and of itself, no matter what the moral condition of the order so obeyed. It’s like forbidding students to do further reading on a subject and then calling that “education”.
Well, yeah, if you think freedom of thought or individual moral development is good in your morality, you can’t have a ‘moral’ code of morals that doesn’t support freedom.
I said it in another comment, but morals are laws for your mind. Instead of physical punishment, it relies on emotional ones like guilt, shame, and rejection, and they get brainwashed into you by society rather than dictated to you by a government.
If you have been trained to think absolute obedience is the one truly good thing it can do, its certainly not an easily thing to change your entire way of thinking to make decisions for yourself. I should have mentioned it, but I find the whole ‘stage’ classification is misleading. Its less ‘stage’ and more ‘type’, but I don’t really think there are any perfect theories in psychology.
Oh, and it is ‘education’ to educate (or instruct) people on what not to learn about. It’s just evil. 🙂
I think we’re using the terms differently. To me, morals are those principles that are real to the person who holds them (even if he accepts those imposed by society), whereas those he only follows because of threat, guilt or whatever without actually accepting them as right are only mores.
I suppose there is something to be said about distinguishing the too types, but fundamentally they both make up a person’s ‘morality’, and when you fail to follow either type, emotional turmoil such as guilt or regret are inevitable.
However, using that difference in definition, it does make sense to say that you cannot have a set of personally developed morals if you cannot freely chose them.
Sorry for the nit picking, but because of how poorly morality is defined in the English language, I always get touchy about being very precise in identifying its nature.
It’s so easy to get too locked up in the details of an increasingly complex argument. Sometimes we just need to settle with imperfect definitions so we can return to smiling sooner, rather than later!
Your initial remarks reminded me of the Nuremberg Trials of the war criminals at the end of WW2. The defence “I was only following orders” was not accepted as mitigation, rather it was felt that the individuals should have known the consequences of their actions.
And then I was reminded of “rendition” and “waterboarding”. Plus ça change.
I did a column on that very subject last year.
Having refreshed my memory, so you did: I’d quite forgotten your blog piece, though I knew about this defence before. (Just how do you remember all the stuff you’ve written, so you can cross-reference so easily?)
I’m also reminded — the cogs of memory grind slowly these days — about a psychology experiment done quite a few years ago. A female monkey and her baby were put in a cage; the floor was gradually heated. At first, the mother held the baby away from the heat. When the heat became too hot for the mother to bear, she stood on her child.
The point being that we all are capable of great “evil” given an appropriate stimulus or reward. (And the other points are: who could design such a cruel experiment — it was done in the US; and should we be cognizant of such studies, or should we ignore them? There were lots of similar “experiments” done in the concentration camps. A variety of the “ends versus means” debate.)
It’s not always easy; the indexes are for my own use as much as anyone else’s. Sometimes I remember the column name, but other times I have to use the subject index or even the search function. Occasionally I can’t find the one I need, and have to rephrase whatever I’m trying to reference, but fortunately that doesn’t happen often.
Only slightly off topic:
Those monkeys were almost as traumatized as sex workers are every day all around the world. That’s almost a form of abuse.
Helpful tip about animal morality: Forcing dogs to fight for rewards is bad and could land you in prison. Breeding them by force is good and you could earn some money in which to buy some private prison Shares on the NYSE to grow that money even more. (Sarcasm alert) What’s the age of consent for breeding dogs, 1-2 years old, isn’t it?
You’ve articulated something here that I’ve tried for years to get through to a lot of my Christian friends – and I do love and respect them but …
My point to them has always been – that HEAVEN is the place where all of God’s laws are to be followed – by everyone – and willingly … that’s what the Nuns told me chatechism anyway.
The Earth is for TESTING. If you create a society where piousness is compulsory – all you’re doing is enforcing Christianity and that is NOT the point of life here on Earth. The point is free will – navigating right and wrong based on one’s own compass.
I’m reminded of when I went through a survival school in the military and they taught me land navigation. Then they plopped me down into an unfamiliar forrest and told me to go from “point a” to “point b” … on my own.
I made some wrong turns, went in the wrong direction for a spell, but I found “point b” and you could deduce from that that I knew how to do basic land navigation.
Imagine if, every time I made a wrong turn – a cattle prod came out of no where and zapped me in the nuts! Wow – I would have made it to “point b” a lot sooner – but I wouldn’t have demonstrated shit for knowledge about land navigation.
I tell my friends – they can vote for Christians – that’s their right. Everyone votes for the guy they feel most comfortable with – but please don’t require him to enforce the Kingdom of God here on Earth – as everything even piousness – is ultimately dependent on free will and navigating moral pitfalls. In order to do that – moral pitfalls have to be allowed to exist.
The problem is twofold:
a) Authoritarians, Christian or otherwise, are less concerned with you learning how to navigate and more concerned in making sure that you get from “point a” to “point b” as quickly and with as little deviation as possible, and if that means you get zapped in the nuts, well make sure the battery’s charged up.
b) They have a desperate fear that if they don’t keep zapping you in the nuts, you’ll decide you’d rather go to “point c” instead, and WE CAN’T HAVE THAT!
Using logical arguments with church-going American Christians.
That’s like trying to rationally plead for your freedom in grammatically-impeccable English with a Papua New Guinea Cannibal Tribe Chief who only speaks Lavukaleve.
I don’t get anarchy. So, telling someone that something is wrong makes them more likely to do it? Instead you have to wait for the special snowflakes to kill somebody and feel sad about it, then they realize murder is evil.
Why can’t you just tell people something is bad? Why the heck does everybody need to learn every single lesson ever learned all over again.
And why do people think Natural Law, in to work it requires that the person responsible get caught and that’s not really a sure thing. I mean absolute monarchy weren’t answerable to any earthly authority and they weren’t morally superior to everybody else.
Surely you understand the difference between malum in se and malum prohibitum? To compare one to the other is specious. Some things are considered wrong in every legal or moral code ever devised because they hurt people (murder, theft, rape, etc); these things are malum in se, wrong because they are wrong. But the victimless “crimes” which vary wildly from code to code, and which no person can judge to be wrong by his own moral compass, are malum prohibitum; wrong because they are prohibited (by some authority). No sane anarchist suggests that malum in se crimes should be allowed; it is the state’s obsession with enacting an infinitely-increasing roster of malum prohibitum offenses (such as “you can’t touch this taboo plant”) that offend the sensibilities of anarchists, libertarians and anyone else with fully human levels of self-esteem.
I would like to point out that murder theft and even rape are not considered wrong in every moral code, just those considered “civilized” by western culture. Even then, depending on the time period, murder changes definition. I don’t know what the laws everywhere say, but I highly doubt duels to the death are not considered murder now.
Might it be that they are considered wrong, but justified in certain cases? For instance many Americans are opposed to “I killed him because I don’t like his race,” but would accept the death penalty for the killer.
“We cannot legislate morality, but we can legislate actions.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
And therein lies the nexus of actions in society. We hope that everyone has some sort of moral compass that prevents them from committing actions that harm others. However, we are left with the fact that 4% of our society–according to Martha Stout’s “The Sociopath Next Door”–are sociopaths, which probably gives them an advantage in business and other endeavors in our society. And that is why anarchy can’t work, the 4% who have no moral compass, and will run over the rest of us.
See the response above. No sane anarchist advocates TOTAL anarchy; hence the terms “libertarian”, “minarchist”, “agorist”, etc. These schools of thought recognize that evil must be controlled, but also recognize (as statists and collectivists refuse to) that for some large number of people to cooperate in an evil (such as theft, abduction, imprisonment or murder) does not make it good.
I think the word you’re looking for then is ‘Minarchy’
It would be interesting to know if people who are in government are more likely to be sociopaths than the general population. And if the percentage of sociopaths rise as you go up the power ladder.
“….Even if it were true that an authoritarian nanny-state was a “safer” society ….. that still would not make it a better society. Moral progress does not begin with authorities bringing stone tablets down from mountains, but with individuals who are free to act openly on their personal principles, thus providing a good example to others…..”
Amen sister!
I was just talking to a friend about post modernism (and all that has followed), and how it promotes the idea that there is no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ art and ‘art is anything which we consider art to be’.
Whether by design or by accident (or a little of both) this type of mindset has come to dominate western culture and I would argue it has even affected our ability / willingness to handle concepts of morality.
Our (art) culture has had decades of ‘there is no right or wrong because every interpretation is just your opinion’ ….. or my pet hate ‘there is no such thing as truth, there is only MY truth and YOUR truth’.
This mindset discourages us from ever ‘imposing’ any kind of scale of worth onto the world around us and I think this mindset has expanded well beyond the realm of art.
We seem to live in a world now where to make ANY kind of ‘value judgement’ is to ‘judge it’ which is to be ‘judgemental’ which is to be as un-PC as a racist or a misogynist.
And so we are left in a world where ‘anything goes’ and there is no good, bad, up, down, right, wrong, proper, improper. Fixed opinions are sooooo limiting and even offensive so we must not be tied down by them and anyway it’s all relative….. Rubbish can be art, noise can be music, idiocy can be genius, good can be evil, war can be peace, freedom can be slavery, I beg your pardon? – oh nothing.
And that’s how evil takes hold of a society – the same way relationships turn sour and people put on weight – through carelessness, thoughtlessness and apathy.
In reality judging the world around us is – yes imposing your actual judgements on a fixed scale of worth! – can be a beautiful thing. In the end, it’s all we have to defend what’s good in the world.
The judgements we make *loud and clear* are the white blood cells society needs to identify and expose evil in the world. Because to expose evil is to defeat it.
To stay silent and be incapable, or worse unwilling, to judge the world around you – especially in a moral sense – is to have no immune system and to invite disease and infection.
It’s really not very difficult, we can start off with the basics…….that milk smells off, that war is evil, that sculpture is just a load of ugly bent metal, that movie was full of military propaganda, that politician is a lying bastard, killing those Iraqi children is totally unacceptable….. they’re not exactly difficult judgements to make.
We can leave the ‘moral minutiae’ for the next generations to sort out once all the basic violence, genocide and destruction has been dealt with. Sound like a good plan?
“Anyone who actually tries to apply universal morality universally is considered insane” – Stefan Molyneux
This man’s videos can never get linked enough IMHO.
A straight shot of moral clarity 🙂
Good is Evil
Several months ago, Krystle–a call girl and very good friend of mine–was brutally murdered for the unthinkable crime of refusing to have sex, compensated or otherwise, with a psycho just released from prison. She and I were to meet for dinner later that day. A sanctimonious religious bitch I knew denigrated Krystle and said the poor girl deserved what she got because her lifestyle made that senseless crime inevitable. Who’s the more upstanding–Krystle, who did what she needed to do to provide for herself and actually refused to lie down with the bastard, or the pharasaical bitch who said she had it coming because of her profession?
You know my answer. Unfortunately, our society is ruled by evil people who convince themselves it’s moral to make things more dangerous for “sinners” in order to “send a message” that these monsters don’t like their behavior.
I’m so sorry about your friend. This shouldn’t happen, and the bitch who tried to whitewash murder should be ashamed of herself.
I don’t feel that it’s ever right for us to say that the victim of a murder “had it coming,” no matter what the circumstances. Even the most ardent supporters of the death penalty don’t generally recommend it be meted out to call girls, or that random psychopaths are the right choice for executioners. You really have to wonder about some people.
Again, I’m sorry for your loss, and for the other people who cared about Krystle.
Our prison system cuts down on crime, right? Currently unable to type anymore… fingerlock from Cognitive Dissonance.
The problem with America is that Americans, by and large, don’t understand the concept of “freedom”, and all that goes with it.
They never really have.
Most people are really quite dangerous. In times of war, for example, it’s very difficult to trust anyone to any great degree: most will sell you for a piece of bread, and some will betray you to the enemy out of fear.
So, under normal circumstances, selling your neighbors’ freedoms for a little perceived security or a benefit or a bribe of your own money (or your neighbors’ money) is easy as pie.
This is, unfortunately, human nature.
We like to cling to higher ideals, but the problem is that we’re really just a bunch of monkeys, when considered collectively.
Nothing I see in the political world has convinced me there’s anything inaccurate about that assessment.
Who does then?
Exactly.
No large human population does. In the US, it’s pretty much only the libertarians, anarchists, minarchists, agorists, voluntaryists, etc; everyone else buys the FDR propaganda that there are such things as “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want”, which are the exact opposite of freedom. Freedom is the freedom to act according to one’s choice and personal morality as long as it doesn’t infringe on others’ right to the same; it doesn’t mean “freedom from consequences” or “freedom from the laws of the universe”, which are nonsensical concepts in which only a child-mind can believe.
“What is the converse of freedom?” asked the Moral History Instructor.
“Responsibility.” Rico answered.
Robert Heinlein-“Starship Troopers”
Unfortunately, most people forget that responsibility extends to more than just themselves. Your rights may end at my nose, but your responsibilities extend beyond your fingertips. Your freedom is directly proportional to the responsibilities you assume in society. This was Heinlein’s message, as well as anarchist Pyotr Kroptkin, the only Russian revolutionary who would have got the time of day from Jefferson and Madison.
RE you Starship Troopers quote. Rob Ager does a good analysis of that movie here.
His youtube channel is worth checking out for anyone who enjoys intelligent, thought provoking movie analysis (especially on Kubrick), although it is currently suffering an onslaught of copyright claims and many videos are blocked.
FWIW the responsibility argument is (another reason) why I do not vote. Voting is the epitome of irresponsible behaviour: offloading your responsibility to organise your own affairs (or help organise the affairs of others) onto a third party agency armed to the teeth with police, courts, armies and ‘laws’ and operating well below the moral standards the rest of us recognise, and at least *try* to live by.
If people want to live their whole lives controlled by abusive, psychopathic, authoritarian government ‘parents’ then fine – go right ahead! – but the only responsible way to do it is to draw up a proper contract so that no one else is forced to endure (and pay for) their S&M fantasy role play of laws, tasers, governments, guns, cages and wars.
If asking ‘government’ to take over the running of your affairs by force really is responsible and morally acceptable behaviour then voters should have absolutely no qualms about stepping in for government at any time and in any situation.
For example voters should have no problem with personally coming round my house each week and threatening me with violence to obtain half my earnings, and if I refuse they should OK about dragging me off and locking me up in a cage. If a voter is not sure if they would be willing to behave in this way why not try it on your neighbour first and if it felt OK then go ahead and vote in the next election.
Voters should also be willing to travel to Iraq (uninvited) and start dismembering children there in front of their families (or dismembering parents in front of their children – same difference) and generally destroying their entire society. Then voters should be willing to justify their own violent behaviour to the Iraqi people *in person*. They should also be willing to take out loans to pay for all of these things today and then in thirty years time they should feel OK about explaining to the next generation why they should be forced to pay these loans back. And if they disagree with your idea you should be willing to lock them up in a cage as well. etc etc
I invite any ‘voters’ to go stand in a mirror, look yourself in the eyes and imagine *yourself* behaving as government does. In reality there is no such thing as government or society. There are just people. *If you vote* then the government acting on behalf of you. The government IS you. You ARE that thief, you ARE that child murderer, you ARE that bully…… and by voting you are forcing ME to be those things too.
Until you voters are able to draw up proper legal contracts with your ‘government’ which leave me excluded from all involvement in your violent, immoral, barbaric behaviour I would politely ask that you stop voting. Thank you.
Since I can’t thumbs up this post, I’ll just recognize it as an excellent post by typing it in as I’m doing now.
Read the book. The movie sucks in comparison, and has nothing about the underlying philosophy.
Did you watch Rob Ager’s analysis?
Obviously it was a Hollywood blockbuster action movie, but there was a lot of depth and subtlety below the surface – as Rob shows.
I don’t have time to watch TV on the computer. Two hours a day at the library when you are on disability leaves no time for such frills.
Could you not download it (to a USB stick if not your own laptop?) using keepvid.com or similar?
Just a thought 🙂
Don’t have a laptop, and the library and my home computer do not have the program of which you speak.
Don’t rely on another’s opinion: Read Heinlein. I read Starship Troopers at least once a year every year between my 18 and 36th birthday. I don’t need someone else’s take: I have my own.
OK, I just thought you might find another perspective interesting that’s all.
Keepvid.com is not a program, it’s a website which allows you to download a youtube video to your computer just by copying/ pasting the video’s URL and clicking ‘download’. Very useful it is too!
I also read Heinlein’s own commentary–and how many people get the point of Starship Troopers wrong–in Expanded Universe, his compendium of articles and little known stories published after his death. Someone else telling me would be like that scene in the Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to School, where the paper on Kurt Vonnegut–that Rodney’s character paid Vonnegut to write–was written by someone who did not understand Vonnegut at all.
There are two ways to generate compliance with social norms that protect social spaces.
1) Communal good will. This is generally only possible among people of similar ethnic, religious and class backgrounds. Linguistic barriers break this down almost immediately. “diversity” requires a difference approach. Hence, #2.
2) Force. The government, bullies, Nannies, someone must shame, oblige, restrict or forcibly detain or control individuals. That’s just how it is.
Unfortunately, we’re not Japan, where #1 largely suffices. This means we need an imposing, harsh state governing us by force if we expect social cohesion.
People are really just animals: ethnicity and langauge really do matter. A sense of belonging, of society benig a group project we’re all engaged in *together*, can be ingrained in people who are very different – but it’s difficult.
The more diversity, the more imposed authoritarianism required to keep basic order.
Very interesting read, particularly the responses.
Reading all of this makes me sad.
If the only things that you believe that you have any duty towards is that small number of things for which you are directly responsible, you are not free. You cannot be free if you so limit yourself, or you take no actions to insure that others are not under those constraints over which they have no realistic control.
Theoretically, an African-American could vote in the Deep South before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, the real world constraints under which the Deep South’s political and electoral system operated, made voting for most African-Americans impossible.
However, as I have written elsewhere, the Lord Chancellor of England—writing the decision for the House of Lords (then as now, the UK’s Supreme Court) stated in the case of Vernon v. Bethell, Eden 2, 113, (1762)—was as correct 150 years ago as he is today: “Necessitous men are not, truly speaking, free men: but to answer a present emergency, will submit to any terms the crafty may impose upon them.”
Sociopaths are not necessarily—in the eyes of our modern society—criminal, let alone evil. Sociopathy is about a lack of empathy for the effects that your actions have on others. Men such as Mitt Romney and George W. Bush are—in my opinion among others—sociopaths, not psychopaths. Mitt Romney’s placing the dog in a kennel on the roof of the family station wagon is the act of a sociopath. George W. Bush’s making fun of Karla Faye Tucker’s plea for clemency is the act of a sociopath as well. These men simply cannot imagine what it is like to be placing them in the positions they are: they have no compass of empathy. They are almost certainly too cowardly to knowingly step over the line from clueless to criminal without a patsy and lots of plausible deniability.
To quote George Bernard Shaw in the Preface to Major Barbara (1905), “The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.”
I will continue to quote Thomas Jefferson (in his letter to Thomas Law in 1814), because his point of view in this statement corresponds exactly with my own: “Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart.”
For the sociopath, there is only “me:” the sole target of tribute for anything positive, including rewards; the automatic exception for anything negative, especially punishment. For a sociopath, right or wrong is measured by success. And if they are successful, they are very often admired by American society until, like Bernie Madoff, they make a mistake, and are made a lesson of.
You have no more freedom realistically than the least free individual in your community. People should be imprisoned because they represent a clear and present danger to their community, not because they have violated some arbitrary law. Someone who has stripped the ability of thousands of people to maintain a reasonable standard of living because they can squeeze $100 million out of a healthy company, may be able to do so legally, but is it moral: I think not!
I’m reminded of one of Maggie’s Wiccan mottoes: “An it harm none, do what thou wilt”.
Essentially, providing it harms no others, choose as you wish.
It implies, of course, that “You are *responsible* for not harming other people”.
Inevitably, one will fail this goal either by inability to forsee consequences, or by placing self over others in a situation of extremis. This is nuanced, because one person’s extremis is another person’s banality.
That’s where the drive towards a concensus social contract comes from: Maggie’s extremis is my banality, so we come into conflict over her actions. At this point, we have two fundamental options; discourse toward compromise, or mutual force (ignoring her actions is a form of inward-directed force).
Socipaths and Psychopaths are the antiparticle to this ethic; having concern only for the self, they inflict harm indiscriminately to others either by accident, ignorance or deliberate design.
However, since a lot of those individuals are in authority positions (It’s arguable that there is a degree of sociopathy inherent in the desire to have authority) what does the conciencious individual do about them?